Helmut Müller-Sievers (University of Colorado Boulder): Buddhistische Literaturwissenschaft

The philosophical core of Buddhism offers the most radical critique of fiction, as it extends to the very subject issuing the critique and, ultimately, to the critique itself. Therefore, this critique can never come to an end or reach a ground of truth on which fictions rest. Western literary studies also view themselves as a critique of fiction, though mostly embedded in a theory of aesthetics or in philosophical anthropology. Do these two forms of critique have anything to say to each other? The lecture attempts to explain the Buddhist philosophy of emptiness and to place it within the framework of contemporary literary-theoretical debates. 

Helmut Müller-Sievers is Professor of German and Courtesy Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. From 1990 to 2009, he taught at Northwestern University, where he held various positions, including director of the Kaplan Center for the Humanities. His work is concerned with the interrelations of literature, science, and philosophy, and with the history of philology and interpretation. 

Selected Publications:

• The Novel Experience. Reading Fiction with Nāgārjuna, Nietzsche, and William James. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2025
• Lesen als reine Erfahrung. Inklusion und Diversität im Dialog mit William James. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2021
• The Science of Literature. Essays on an Incalculable Difference. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter 2015
• The Cylinder. Kinematics of the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press 2012
• Desorientierung: Anatomie und Dichtung bei Georg Büchner. Göttingen: Wallstein 2003
• Self-Generation: Biology, Literature, Philosophy around 1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1997
• Epigenesis: Naturphilosophie im Sprachdenken Wilhelm von Humboldts. Paderborn: Schöningh 1994